Computerworld- the two laptop minimum
Bob Russell of MobileRead sent me a link to a story on Computerworld that looked like it could easily have been written by someone we know and hopefully love. Author Mike Elgan has written a very interesting article about how the small laptops like the EEE PC have changed the way he believes the road warrior should equip themselves for getting the most work done. He states correctly that there is nothing better than these tiny laptops for getting work done on airplanes and during layovers on business trips. He goes on to state that these laptops are too small to get the most work done in hotels as you need to get the biggest screen you can carry to be the most productive. Thus, his "two laptop minimum". He explains his thought process:
1. Regular laptops have gotten far cheaper. Moore andhis law have brought down the costs of miniaturization, LCD real estateand other components.
2. Researchers have established an inescapable correlation between screen size and productivity
3. The Asus Eee PC and its ilk have transformed the market — and pricing — for tiny laptops.
For the most part I agree with Mike although in my case it’s currently a 3 laptop minimum. I don’t even own a desktop PC like Mike thinks you need at home, no I’m quite happy with my 17" MacBook Pro with a second monitor attached on my desktop. Throw in the HP 2710p and the Fujitsu P1620 and my 3 laptops are hard to beat. I would disagree with Mike on needing a bigger laptop for working in hotels on trips however. I find the P1620 to be a full-function laptop with no compromises for getting things done but that’s likely just me. I’m writing this on it as a matter of fact. Mike’s article is a good read though and shouldn’t be missed. Have a look at it and let us know what you think about Mike’s premise.
I really disagree with this article. So I bought the 1620 so I could be more mobile and carry less stuff and now they want me to carry 2? the 1620 will be my work laptop or I will return it. I dont want to mess with two with trying to keep everything in synch, etc. I may hook this up to a large monitor at home. Haven’t decided yet. I’m not sure I need to but I might.
I understand this concept. I have a Compaq commercial laptop that is my main computer. An eeePC would be great to travel with. We visit my mother in law in Burnet, TX where the only hot spots are at McDonald and the Pizza Hut. I have a (terrible) cuppa there in the morning and check my email and what is going on in the world.
The small size adn longer battery life of an Asus would be great, plus I would not be endangering my main machine by traveling with it.
..wiley
NW Houston
I think one convertible tablet pc can easily do what the two laptops without the possibility of converting to slate mode will do. You can use it in tablet mode in tight space, like the airplane (which I prefer to working on a teeny tiny keyboard), or just to do more creative tasks, like drawing, diagramming, brainstorming, etc. You can use the keyboard at the hotel for power typing mode, or super annoying keyboard centric programs that are a pain to tablet pc lovers. :-} I wouldn’t want to haul around two mobile computers. I thought the idea was to do more with less, not to strain your back.
I don’t think any pundit is holding a gun to our heads, but they’re also looking at the most economical alternative, which leads to an interesting shift from just a year ago.
JK can get by with a 1620, but that’s on a fairly hefty spec that you can get for less with a larger laptop, if you can give up the Tablet functions. You can, in fact, get a mid-range Dell to match JK’s CPU/RAM/disk needs for under $900. Toss in another $400 for the Eee PC 4G, and you’re at $1300. The P1620 *starts* at $1750, and that’s with less RAM, a smaller hard disk, and no Bluetooth. JK’s spec is necessarily more costly, and with good reason: Miniaturization is expensive. Cramming the functionality of a 5 year old laptop, and the storage capacity of a 10 year old laptop into a small case isn’t terribly hard or expensive, but cramming a Core 2 Duo, a DIMM slot, and true mass storage into a form factor only marginally larger, WITH a swiveling touch screen? That’s gonna cost you.
For most people, the economical alternative is a bigass 14-15″ laptop with gobs of performance for the hotel room/visitor office, and a low-performance ultramobile for long flights and other situations where you’re away from a power outlet (and elbow room!) for extended periods of time.
For the rest of us, there’s a premium attached to no-compromises mobile computing, and JK, amongst others, is willing to pay for that. We already know that his 17″ MBP never leaves the house, and that he chooses which system to take with him at any given time, however, so it’s probably a rare event that causes him to pack both the HP and Fujitsu on a trip.
the only reason the “researchers” believe rule #2 is probably because they have been using 14-15″ laptops for decades & are probably older with reduced vision. somewhat irrelevant consumers of the new age should avoid offering up opinions on a new world that is foreign to them, it’s like watching grandpa discussing pop/rap music with the grandkids.
the only thing that MIGHT have given them a little more credibility is to include resolution in that argument, because all of us “in the know” understand it’s importance. and no, higher resolution on a bigger screen cannot just be assumed because many 15″ monitors still only come in WXGA.
Well I ALWAYS carry 2 laptops with me. Since I am in IT being in a situation where you carry one laptop and the chance of it being DOA when you get somewhere needing to do something important is BAD. Especially if you are traveling. I carry my Toshiba Libretto U105 and either a Samsung Q1 or a Fujitsu LifeBook U810 (depending on what I want to carry as a back up. If I need more power then i pair the Libretto up with my Dell XPS M1210 or a bigger screen then my Apple MacBook Pro 17″. Heck I even carry 2 air cards just in case, a Novatel EX720 and a Sierra Wireless U595, because just like puters, you gotta have a network back up plan as well. The fun part is having all these computers on in my home office and working on them all at the same time.
In defense of Mike – I use a multiple monitor setup at work, and depending on what tasks I’m addressing, I can find myself feeling constrained when I have to work with just one screen. If I’m doing major spreadsheet work, I think I’d feel limited with only a small laptop screen compared to what I am accustomed to. I’m sure I’d manage if I had to, but if I were in that situation regularly, possibly the 2 laptop setup might start to look like it was worthwhile lugging the extra machine.
And hey, @Gni, I represent that failing vision cohort. I’ll try to remember that makes my opinions irrelevant. I still think the researchers offer a valid point of view *as a general rule*, thus the justification for multiple/larger monitors sitting on desks, at least.
All great opinions. I guess where I’m approaching this is from a fairly busy travel schedule. I’ve traveled 2-3 days a week for over 10 years and I’m always trying to scale down my kit. Smaller, lighter, combine functionality into one machine that sort of thing. Pack and carry less.
That being said, you should see what our consultants travel with. Huge 17″ laptops with enough power to light a city and they wouldn’t carry anythng less. I think part of the difference is they go somewhere and park for the week and then fly back. I fly to a 4 hour meeting, get on another plane fly to another meeting the next day, etc. At home, I hook up a 19″ monitor so I can see for long periods as I work. I dont think I could stare at the 8.9″ screen all day for my main work but I feel I now may have the best of both worlds.
…and you’re absolutely right. There is a price premium for that. It’s all in what you prefer and what your schedule is like I guess.
That article came at an interesting time because I’m getting an Asus Eee PC delivered in a few days and pondering a two-laptop strategy when traveling. My older IBM/Lenovo X41 Tablet PC is 3.5 – 4 pounds (depending on the battery), and on the surface it seems fine to carry around.
But when I’m at computer/wireless shows — such as the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and the upcoming CTIA Wireless 2008 — and I’m wandering among hundreds/1,000+ exhibits as well as picking up literature and, probably, some magazines, even the X41 gets to be a real drag after hours of walking.
So carrying just the two-pound Eee PC seems like a great device in these situations — when I also want to blog or write write documents during the day. The Eee PC’s keyboard probably will be too small for hours of fast touch typing, so for that I’d like a full size keyboard when I’m in the hotel room.
I’ve also got an Nokia N800 and N810 Internet Tablet, but the latter’s keyboard isn’t good for typing more than a few sentences, and the former requires an external keyboard for typing at length.
Taking both the four-pound X41 plus the two-pound Eee PC won’t be such a big deal. Something to try to determine if it makes sense during certain business trips.
i keep envisioning some kind of modular setup when i read stuff like this, rather then a collection of monolithic computers.
want more cpu horsepower? add a cpu module via some cabling or other, same with screen, storage and so on…
The problem with those modules is that when they’ve been done, the core module is basically JUST the brains of a computer in a sturdy case. Adding a battery, keyboard, display, and pointing device tend to make it too bulky with all of the redundant packaging.
That said, VMWare virtual desktops and Citrix aren’t bad for offloading a lot of those CPU-heavy processes, but now you’re dependent on the network, and even the most mobile workers are going to spend some time offline, due to the simple lack of ubiquitous data networks, especially on airplanes.
and carrying one laptop for size and one for horsepower isnt bulky?
Of course it’s bulky, but my main point here is that it makes the Eee/OQO equivalent too bulky. It’s all about the mobility compromise.
Here’s the current example of that: http://www.modular-pc.com/Modular-Micro-Tablet-Spec-Sheet.htm
This thing is nearly *two inches thick.* The core module itself is only about 3/4″ thick, but you can easily make that smaller when you don’t have to *deal* with modularity. At the end of the day, though, you still have to make a module that can survive being tossed in a backpack, swapped between a handful of docks (I can see a market for a laptop, UMPC, desktop, and car dock,) but grab power from some external source as managed by the accessory chassis.
Even then, the computing paradigm at play here isn’t all that great. It’s not grab-and-go computing if you have to hibernate the module, swap jackets, and wake it back up. To fix that, you need either some sort of standby battery, ultra-low-power components (SSD *and* some sort of high-performance NVRAM,) or both, allowing the system to rapidly suspend to a zero-power state when undocked.
Modern Desktop OS design isn’t very cluster-friendly, either, so it’s not like you can toss in a second system over some sort of short-haul Infiniband link and just hope for the best.
At this point, ubiquitous storage access is still best left to hybrid SSD/HD installations, and synchronization to the cloud, which doesn’t really solve anything. Not that I don’t *like* what you’re saying. I’d love my computing environment to exist as a wafer-thin card, in some hyper-redundant clustering design that latched on to additional CPUs, synced its internal storage to the cloud at all times, and pulled applications from the best-performing nodes available at any given time, simply scaling down when networks were unavailable. I’d be thrilled to have this *everywhere,* so that I could lease/rent the chassis that I needed for a given purpose. Need a UMPC form factor for a flight? Rent it before I take off, drop it off when I land. Need a laptop for the week? Rent it from the hotel. Need a desktop? Have one dropped off at the office I’m visiting.
It’s a great idea, I just fear that it’s way, WAY ahead of its time.
Two laptops work well for me especially if one is used as a second monitor/ workspace with third party software like Multiplicity Pro from Stardock:
http://www.stardock.com/products/multiplicity/